Re-nationalisation & Shares?

bostonerimus

I can't comment on today's "intercity" rail service because I refuse to pay the high fares and haven't used it for years.. I have been on London commuter trains and those were often delayed.

Back in the 1970s and 80s I often travelled on the Edinburgh- King Cross line. It wasn't that expensive, I could afford it on a student grant, and you could get kippers for breakfast on the southerly run. I don't even consider using the train when I visit the UK now.

eskbanker

bostonerimus wrote: »

I can't comment on today's "intercity" rail service because I refuse to pay the high fares and haven't used it for years.. I have been on London commuter trains and those were often delayed.

Back in the 1970s and 80s I often travelled on the Edinburgh- King Cross line. It wasn't that expensive, I could afford it on a student grant, and you could get kippers for breakfast on the southerly run. I don't even consider using the train when I visit the UK now.

Bringing some stats into play again, privatisation has coincided with a massive increase in passenger numbers to reverse the steady decline in the nationalised years, so your view would appear not to be typical:

ColdIron

bostonerimus wrote: »

I could afford it on a student grant, and you could get kippers for breakfast on the southerly run

Students smoking fags and eating kippers, an olfactory delight

msallen

Glen_Clark wrote: »

I remember the simple honest ticket pricing under British Rail. You didn't need to research it and jump through hoops backwards to get a reasonable ticket price. It was same price however you bought it, and a return was twice the price of a single.(Which we still have with CalMac ferries in Scotland.)
Only thing thats improved for the commuter since privatisation is the food. But then the food everywhere else has improved since the old days too.

It most certainly wasn't. I have vivid memories of wanting to go from St Pancras to Sheffield when I was in my late teens (mid 80s) and being advised in the ticket office to buy a return and throw the second ticket away.

bostonerimus

eskbanker wrote: »

Bringing some stats into play again, privatisation has coincided with a massive increase in passenger numbers to reverse the steady decline in the nationalised years, so your view would appear not to be typical:

What services does this include. I expect the vast majority of these rides are in the SE/London. My observations were mainly for the East Coast Main line and my feeling that the fare costs were too high and complicated for a visitor to the UK, nothing about usage.....it might be different for a regular traveller

fewgroats

I'm wondering what else they could nationalise.

Customs and Excise.
Crown estates.
The Police.
Parks and gardens.
Libraries and museums.

Okay, there's quite a lot.

eskbanker

bostonerimus wrote: »

What services does this include. I expect the vast majority of these rides are in the SE/London. My observations were mainly for the East Coast Main line and my feeling that the fare costs were too high and complicated for a visitor to the UK, nothing about usage.....it might be different for a regular traveller

I believe those figures are the macro nationwide picture rather than anything more specific, but have no reason to doubt that the ECML stats will have followed a similar pattern, although can't readily find actual figures to back this up. However, the news coverage of the current renationalising here talks of an unexpected recent drop in numbers after two decades of consistent post-privitisation growth.

And yes, I wasn't seeking to challenge your legitimate views in any way, just observing that traffic volumes would suggest that many others have overcome such reservations!

bostonerimus

eskbanker wrote: »

And yes, I wasn't seeking to challenge your legitimate views in any way, just observing that traffic volumes would suggest that many others have overcome such reservations!

It would be interesting to know how much of the ridership increase was from people in SE/London where train travel is almost the only commuter option and who often have their costs defrayed by their employers.

EachPenny

eskbanker wrote: »

I think most would agree from this chart that the post-Railtrack era (late 2002 on) is generally a distinct improvement over what went before it, especially with another couple of zeroes to be added to the right hand side:

I'd agree that a lot of people would draw the same conclusion from the chart, but it would be a poor use of statistical information and certainly doesn't support the assertion "railtrack had an appalling safety record".

The chart only shows fatalities, not casualties as a whole, nor does it show any information about the number of incidents. The data also doesn't convey any information about the cause of each accident and who or what was responsible. Not all accidents on the railway are the fault of the company operating the track.

The chart is suitable for supporting a Daily Mail headline, but not for objectively assessing the safety record of Railtrack relative to the arrangements before and since.

The first issue is the figure of 31 for 1999, which immediately skews most people's impression of the statistics. All 31 were casualties of the Ladbroke Grove accident. If you remove that single bar from the chart most people would form a different conclusion about the relative safety of the Raltrack and Network Rail years. If there was a single accident tomorrow which resulted in 50 people being killed, no sensible person would describe Network rail as having "an appalling safety record".

Without Ladbroke Grove it could be claimed that in two out of the last 5 years of Railtrack's operation there were no fatalities, whereas there were fatalities in every year of the first 5 years of Network Rail. That conclusion would be an equally poor interpretation of the data though.

The problem with attempting to analyse fatality data is that fatal accidents, although newsworthy, are rare and usually heavily influenced by random factors. The difference between a 'fatal' and 'serious' casualty is often chance, and not related to the actual incident itself. Human survival following a serious accident is affected by pre-existing health issues, age, promptness of medical care and other issues such as the number of other casualties needing medical attention. The number of people who died in the Ladbroke Grove accident had more to do with the types of train involved, and that it involved a serious fire. These weren't factors under Railtrack control of course.

A good example to demonstrate the point about random factors is the 'near miss' at Wootton Bassett in 2015. There are similarities between this incident and what happened at Ladbroke Grove. A train made up with Mk1 and Mk2 carriages (very poor crashworthiness) passed a red signal and ended up straddling a junction a High Speed Train (high energy, built like a brick outhouse) had passed through seconds before. If the HST had arrived seconds later then there would have been carnage on a scale making Ladbroke Grove look minor. As it is, Wootton Bassett gets recorded as a "Dangerous occurrence" rather than replacing the '0' for 2015 on the chart with a very large bar.

To make any meaningful assessment of Railtrack's safety record relative to other arrangements it would be necessary to study incidents of all types, to make an assessment of the responsibility and/or involvement of the track operating company in the cause of each incident, and then factor the data according to the level of activity on the network and the development and implementation of new technology (TPWS, data logging etc) which has influenced the probability of different types of accident happening.

There were a lot of things wrong with Railtrack, and many reasons to criticise them. But anyone making the assertion that "railtrack had an appalling safety record" should be able to back it up with something far more robust than a chart showing the number of railway fatalities per year.

EachPenny

bostonerimus wrote: »

It would be interesting to know how much of the ridership increase was from people in SE/London where train travel is almost the only commuter option and who often have their costs defrayed by their employers.

More than you could possibly want to know about the subject is probably contained within this report:-
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/26598/Regional-Rail-Usage-2016-17.pdf


There is strong growth in most of the country, and London and the South-East are seeing a slight decline in use. There are some suggestions this is a result of industrial action, but I would suggest that the system in London is reaching saturation point where the journey to and from work by train is so hellish that people have started to look at other options. In London cycling in particular is probably starting to draw passengers off the trains.